Former presidential candidate Uss denies that he has schizophrenia

Former presidential candidate Dzmitry Uss denied that he had schizophrenia as claimed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka on Friday.

“I have a neurological disease, which has nothing to do with schizophrenia,” Mr. Uss said at a question-and-answer session hosted by the Belarusian service of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe on the same day. “I possess carbines and other rifles. His attempt to make me a schizophrenic is part of his smear campaign aimed at slinging mud at me. I have undergone every examination and have a driver’s license. I don’t have schizophrenia. It is a sheer lie.”

Mr. Uss was released from prison on October 1 after Alyaksandr Lukashenka issued a presidential edict earlier in the day to “pardon” the ex-candidate convicted over a post-election protest staged in Minsk’s Independence Square on December 19, 2010.

Speaking at the news conference on Friday, Mr. Lukashenka said that he ordered the release of Mr. Uss after he had written a letter to him, complaining that he was “psychologically exhausted and ill.”

“We brought him to a hospital,” Mr. Lukashenka said. “It turned out that he really had some type of schizophrenia and had been registered as having a second-degree disability. Meanwhile, the state was supposed to feed him, a representative of a fifth column. Would you hold a person with a second-degree disability in prison? Well, we freed him.”

Speaking of the remaining three opposition politicians who continue to be held in prison in connection with the post-election protest, Mr. Lukashenka said that he could order their release on the basis of their applications for pardon. “We don’t need them,” he said. “Even they [Western politicians] do not need them any more. They are by no means the opposition. They are bandits”.